With the Dao Plague temporarily suppressed, the upper echelons of the Hunyuan Sect had no choice but to face the problems the Yuandian Pavilion had left behind.
Shen Yuanbai's records were read aloud in open session. Several old elders who had taken part in the expulsion decision back then sat in the hall, faces gone iron-grey, with nothing to say in their own defense.
Gu Chengming watched from the side, cool-eyed, and saw the whole thing clearly.
Most of the men who had actually banged the gavel on that verdict were long gone from the sect. The few still alive had, at the time, been nothing more than seconders of the motion or bystanders who kept their mouths shut.
Dragging up mildewed grain and stale sesame seeds to prosecute to the bitter end was neither meaningful nor possible.
Getting Shen Yuanbai's name written back into the sect registers openly and honorably, and letting those texts that had gathered dust in the old pavilion for decades see daylight again, was the best outcome anyone could have fought for.
Still, compared with the sect's plodding, step-by-step procedure, matters inside Gu Chengming's Sea of Consciousness moved a great deal faster.
After this whole upheaval, the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula had clearly grown talkative.
In ordinary times, Miss Wine-Sword Immortal at her soberest would toss out a few harmless bits of idle chatter at most, and only after three rounds of drink would she start dissecting the ills of the age.
But ever since the affair at the old pavilion, she had begun broadcasting opinions in broad daylight, without so much as a drop of wine in her.
[Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula: The Hunyuan Sect's council-of-elders system is, at bottom, still a one-voice chamber run by the body-cultivation line. The Yuandian Pavilion's seat is decorative at best. What good does writing Shen Yuanbai's name back in do? Change nothing about the system, and in another fifty years there will simply be a second Shen Yuanbai swept out the gate.]
Gu Chengming grumbled silently to himself: it was a mercy that Miss Wine-Sword Immortal was only a cultivation technique. Had she been some rogue cultivator in the flesh, she'd have been on the blacklist of the Great Qian, or of half a dozen sects, long ago.
For once, Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method offered no rebuttal.
Even Zhouli, the great stickler for propriety, declined to take up the argument, which showed how squarely the wine-sword formula's words had struck the sore spot.
And then, of course, there was the biggest change of all.
[Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula, tone softening all at once: Enough. Dwell too long on a sect's mess and it sours the mood. Compared with all this smoke-choked scheming, I'd much rather talk about you, young friend.]
Gu Chengming was about to think back a wary "talk about what, exactly," when the sweet talk arrived, flowing like drifting cloud and running water, without the faintest trace of girlish coyness — poised, easy, utterly unabashed.
[Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula, laughing low and soft: That business in the old pavilion — the way you held me tight and wouldn't let go, young friend. I've kept it close. There are thousands upon thousands of fine hands with a blade in this world, but only one who could make me willingly put my drunkenness away and choose to walk the red dust sober at his side. Only you, young friend.]
[Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula: The day you tire of the heights of court and the distances of the jianghu, take me with you. Never mind the Great Qian's southwest — even the Nine Springs of the underworld. So long as the hand on the hilt is yours, mountains of knives and seas of fire look like fine scenery to me. Those sour scholars are forever chasing some undying glory across the ages. I'd say that meeting you, year after year after year, is worth more than everything else the mortal world has to offer.]
And the most immediate consequence of this change, for Gu Chengming, was—
[The Huiyuan Sword Formula's alarm bells are ringing at full volume. Sense of crisis off the charts.]
Having unlocked the Love Huiyuan Sword Formula, Little Huiyuan had considered its seat as principal wife thoroughly secure.
Watch Gu Chengming practice other sword arts? Practice away. I'm one of a kind, and nobody gets past me.
But the situation had changed completely.
Not only had the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula gotten through the door, its favorability had shot straight up, leaping from Friendly all the way to Liked.
Worse still, it was pouring out sweet talk by the barrel — the same category of assault as the Clear-Heart Formula, just aimed from a different angle.
In the Huiyuan Sword Formula's eyes, this was an armed raid on its own doorstep, torches and all.
[The Qingxin Formula watched the show with great relish for a while, then needled: Surely Little Huiyuan didn't actually think every rival in the world would be like Little Flowing Cloud?]
Fair enough. It probably had underestimated every sword formula under heaven because Flowing Cloud, Moon-Following Sword Art had the temperament of a background extra.
Recalling now its own magnanimous line back then — "Chengming, go ahead and cultivate other sword arts, don't trouble yourself" — how generous, how serene it had sounded!
[The Huiyuan Sword Formula is losing its mind.]
But there was no medicine in this world for regret. The principal wife's broad-minded tolerance had already been put on display, and to leap out now and throw a tantrum — "absolutely not, you're forbidden to talk to her" — would make it nothing but a jealous shrew.
[It insisted stubbornly: I am still Gu's Number One Sword Formula!]
[The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula hums a tuneless folk ditty, entirely unaware that a certain principal wife has designated it enemy number one.]
Setting aside the byplay among his cultivation techniques, the real business of Gu Chengming's trip to the Hunyuan Sect could be counted half done.
He had come to investigate the abnormalities among cultivators in the Great Qian's southwest, and by a crooked chain of accidents had dragged the Dao Plague into the light, which at least pointed him in a direction. The mess over at the Yunyue Sect was nine parts in ten tangled up with the Dao Plague as well.
The seal beneath the Emerald Screen Range linked the two sects. If the Hunyuan Sect's end already leaked like a sieve, how could the Yunyue Sect's end be sound?
The displaced shadows Ji Yixi had mentioned, the sect-protecting grand formation drawing inward — those were almost certainly alarm signals from the far side of the seal breaking down.
As for the Hunyuan Sect itself...
Gu Chengming could only rate it as a genuine, card-carrying amateur outfit.
They had thrown away the Yuandian Pavilion's inheritance with their own hands, leaving the Mutual-Reference Formation Array crippled and incomplete, and everyone who understood how to repair it had either been driven out or vanished without trace.
The records he'd brought out of the old pavilion were complete, true enough, but they were all theoretical derivation. Turning them into actual construction would take a mountain of manpower, materials and time.
At present the Hunyuan Sect had peeled off personnel to force the seal down by brute strength, which, put plainly, was a stopgap bluff — it only slowed the Dao Plague's spread.
It wasn't that Gu Chengming hadn't considered reporting the matter to the Night-Watch Bureau and having Zhou Qingmu step in to coordinate.
But distant water puts out no nearby fire, and the Dao Plague touched the very foundations of the Hunyuan Sect. Too deep an intervention from outside could easily backfire.
The soundest method was for him to oversee the repair work personally, plugging at least the most urgent gaps first. But a practical problem stood in the way: he had no standing.
Strictly speaking, the Night-Watch Bureau investigation warrant Zhou Qingmu had issued did grant him the authority to oversee the hundred sects — but that authority extended only to "looking" and "asking." It did not include "commanding" or "deciding."
He could point out where the seal was leaking; he had no right to order the Hunyuan Sect's elders how to patch it. And the elders' attitude toward him was rather delicate.
Gratitude, certainly. He had risked his life going into the old pavilion for the records, and had put down a fiend with a single sword stroke and saved a great many disciples. There would be no shortage of gracious words.
But letting a third-realm disciple from an outside sect wave his hands about and tell them how to allocate resources to repair the seal?
The rough-hewn old bruisers of the body-cultivation line couldn't swallow that.
Night fell, in Hua Daiyi's private courtyard.
The two of them sat as usual on either side of the stone table in the yard, a pot apiece, drinking alone beneath the moon.
Tonight Hua Daiyi had, unusually, barely touched his wine. Most of the pot still sat placidly where it was. He turned his bowl in his hands a couple of times, then spoke up.
"Little Gu, there's something this old man has to lay out straight for you."
Gu Chengming set down his cup.
"It isn't that they're ungrateful," Hua Daiyi said, blunt as ever, cutting straight to the heart of it. "It's that you've got no position that would make them willing to take orders from you."
Crude words, sound reasoning. That was exactly the knot of it.
Direct-lineage prodigy of the Wenjian Sect, Inspector of the Night-Watch Bureau — impressive-sounding titles, every one of them, and on Hunyuan Sect ground every one of them stamped with the label "outsider."
Gratitude was gratitude. Obedience was obedience. Two entirely separate things.
Gu Chengming was quiet a moment. "What is Martial Uncle Hua suggesting?"
Hua Daiyi set his wine bowl down with a thump, and his gaze took on a peculiar light.
"Do you know of the Chengyuan Terrace?"
Gu Chengming shook his head.
[The Hundred Bones Resonance has instantly pricked up its ears.]
Hua Daiyi leaned forward, his tone no longer that of idle chat. "The Hunyuan Sect's predecessor was called the Huntian Sect. Its founding patriarch was an ancient body cultivator who made a saint of his own flesh. Fierce old fellow, hard as they come. Before he died he laid down a rule: whoever can bear the weight of the Dao he left behind is fit to walk the world in his place, and to rule the sect in his stead."
"That rule is called the Chengyuan Trial."
Hua Daiyi rose and walked to the courtyard wall, pointing off toward the depths of the rear mountain.
"The examination hall is the Chengyuan Terrace back there. On the terrace stands a stone pillar, black through and through, called the Yuanzhu. About one zhang two in height, its surface covered in ancient body-cultivator inscriptions, smelted from meteoric iron blended with the essence of the earth."
"What makes the Yuanzhu strange," Hua Daiyi said, turning back and raising one finger, "is that its weight changes — dynamically — according to the realm, the physique, and even the will of whoever touches it."
"To an ordinary disciple it's just a dead lump of rock. But to someone who truly stirs the Dao-intent held inside it—"
He paused, and his voice sank lower and heavier.
"What comes down on your shoulders is the weight of an entire Dao. That ancient body cultivator's lifetime of understanding of what 'the body cultivator's Dao' means — all of it poured in there."
Understanding dawned on Gu Chengming. So there was a sword-in-the-stone segment as well?
[The Hundred Bones Resonance is listening with its eyes blazing.]
"That's right," Hua Daiyi nodded. "Raw brute strength alone gets you nowhere. Even if you're a fifth-realm body cultivator, if your will doesn't match the Yuanzhu's Dao-intent, it stays a dead object. Won't shift a hair. Don't dream of lifting it half an inch off the ground."
"How high you can raise the Yuanzhu proves how great your potential is on the body cultivator's road."
Then Hua Daiyi changed tack and spread both hands.
"And to this day, nobody has ever gotten it completely off the terrace."
He fixed his eyes on Gu Chengming, a probing glint in them. "If someone actually did it, he'd be invested directly as Holy Son of the Huntian Sect. We call ourselves the Hunyuan Sect now, but the ancestor's rule has come down to us intact, and nobody dares abolish it. By the old code, a Holy Son ranks level with a senior elder within the sect."
Said that far, the unspoken part was practically shouting.
Take hold of that position, and Gu Chengming could put his hands into the Hunyuan Sect's internal affairs with full legitimacy — take charge of repairing the seal, even allocate personnel outright.
Not lecturing them as a disciple of an outside sect, but presiding over the whole situation in the name of the Hunyuan Sect's Holy Son.
Gu Chengming was faintly startled. The Hunyuan Sect had been sitting on a tradition like this?
But he came around quickly to the other side of it. By any accounting, he wasn't a member of the Hunyuan Sect at all. Marching in bold as brass to yank out somebody else's heirloom spirit artifact — was that appropriate?
"Martial Uncle Hua." Gu Chengming weighed his words. "I did, after all, take my vows under the Wenjian Sect. This Chengyuan Trial—"
Hua Daiyi waved a hand, cutting the objection off flat.
"The Yuanzhu recognizes the man, not the school." His tone left no room for argument. "So long as you can lift it, never mind being a Wenjian Sect disciple — you could be a traitor who'd fled the Eternal Life Sect and that Holy Son's seat would still be yours. It's iron law set down by an ancient body cultivator. The Yuanzhu comes first, the sect comes second. Who in the whole Hunyuan Sect would dare breathe a word against it?"
He paused briefly, then added, unhurried, "And if you can't pull it free, the people upstairs will look at your two signboards — Night-Watch Bureau and Wenjian Sect direct lineage — and won't give you any trouble. Worst case, the whole sect laughs at this old man instead. Says my eyes have gone bad. A few extra days of gossip over tea, that's all."
At that, the old man let out a wheezing chuckle, fished a drab grey token from his belt, and spun it twice between his fingers.
"Dark night, high wind, everyone's cleared out. This old man uses his elder's authority to sneak you into the rear mountain. Guaranteed nobody hears a thing."
Watching how thoroughly practiced Hua Daiyi looked at all this, Gu Chengming silently raised a thumb.
Truly worthy of Martial Uncle Hua.
His way of operating was cast from exactly the same mold as Gu Chengming's own master—
—all "no rush, no rush, it's all a matter of fate" out loud, while behind your back the great smooth highway had already been paved slick as oil, and all that remained was to push your head down into a nod.
[The Hundred Bones Resonance, blood already boiling from what it had heard, cheered at once: Heavenly Emperor Gu! It is the weight of a Dao! It is an ancient inheritance!]
[The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula, stone sober, took a rare interest: That does sound rather amusing. If a rule left by an ancient body cultivator has lasted this long, it shows that however amateurish the Hunyuan Sect may be, it still keeps some reverence for its founding patriarch.]
[Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method inclined its head slightly: Excellent. This accords with ancient rite — proving quality by trial, without regard to origin, without asking one's school, promoting solely on merit. The Huntian Sect's founding patriarch was indeed a man of clear understanding.]
Zhouli and the wine-sword formula had actually reached consensus on the same matter?
Somewhat taken aback, Gu Chengming stood and gave the hem of his robe a casual brush.
"Then I'll trouble Martial Uncle Hua to lead the way."
Deep in the night, the moon hidden behind cloud.
Hua Daiyi led Gu Chengming along a stone path in the Hunyuan Sect's rear mountain, half swallowed by weeds, feeling their way forward in the dark.
Both deliberately drew in their auras and pressed close to the cliff face, for all the world like a pair of fat rats out stealing grain by night.
"Martial Uncle Hua, something's moving up ahead?" Gu Chengming kept his voice down, tone still level.
Hua Daiyi's steps halted hard, and he yanked Gu Chengming into the brush at the side of the path.
Spirit light kindled at the fork ahead. A burly middle-aged cultivator came striding along with a storm lantern in hand — none other than Elder Sun of the Hunyuan Sect's Bedrock Peak.
Hua Daiyi's expression shifted a little, and he grumbled inwardly: old Sun's always been a light sleeper — what's he doing up in the rear mountain in the dead of night?
Elder Sun reached the fork and paused, as if he'd caught some rustle in the grass. He lifted the lantern and swept its light toward the bushes.
As the beam passed over them, Hua Daiyi crouched steady as a mountain, both men running their aura-suppression and form-concealing arts to the limit.
Branches and leaves rustled overhead, just barely covering the two of them. Elder Sun stared suspiciously for two breaths, then shook his head at last, muttered "a hare, most likely," and turned off down another narrow path.
Only then did Hua Daiyi pull his hand back and let out a long, stale breath. "Go. Before he doubles back."
[The Hundred Bones Resonance was greatly incensed by this: A mere elder! Why should Heavenly Emperor Gu give ground? Crush him head-on and be done with it!]
Gu Chengming sighed inwardly. Old Hundred, tonight we're here to sneak off with a pillar, not to smash the place up and kick in the doors.
After perhaps another stick of incense's walk, a stone terrace half buried in weeds and broken rock came into view.
The Chengyuan Terrace.
Its surface had been hewn from a single slab of grey-green boulder, faded formation lines lingering at the four corners. Dead center on the terrace stood a stone pillar, black through and through.
The Yuanzhu stood about one zhang two high, just thick enough that a man's arms could barely encircle it, its surface packed edge to edge with ancient body-cultivator inscriptions. Under the veiled moonlight those inscriptions gave off a faint dark-gold sheen.
Standing below the terrace, Hua Daiyi watched Gu Chengming stroll up onto it, muttering "go on then," while privately holding out very little hope.
To be honest, he'd brought the boy here mostly to honor the sentiment between them, to offer some consolation.
See, your martial uncle did everything he could. Showed you the road, even. Blame the Yuanzhu for not giving face.
Don't take it too much to heart afterward. Worst comes to worst, we'll find another way.
After all, not one person had budged the thing since the sect was founded.
The last time it had made any noise at all was eight hundred years ago, with True Lord Bedrock—
—the only body cultivator in all of the Hunyuan Sect's recorded history to set foot in the seventh realm. Legend said that when True Lord Bedrock challenged the Chengyuan Trial with a fifth-realm body, all he managed was to make the Yuanzhu shudder faintly, twice. He never even peeled it off the terrace.
In the eight centuries since, successors had come thick as fish crossing a river — fifth realm, sixth realm, even body-cultivation masters from outside sects drawn by its reputation. Without a single exception, all of them had gone home with their feathers plucked.
In time, the Chengyuan Terrace had slid from "proving ground for selecting the Holy Son" down to "stop on the one-day sect sightseeing tour."
Gu Chengming was gifted beyond question, and the affair at Floating Isle City had stunned everyone who saw it — but say what you liked, an eighth-layer, third-realm sword cultivator coming to pull the sect-guarding Yuanzhu of a body-cultivation sect...
Hua Daiyi shook his head again and again, privately. He only hoped the boy wouldn't be too crushed in a moment.
Gu Chengming stood before the Yuanzhu and set both palms firmly against the cold shaft. The instant his palms met the inscriptions, a pressure too heavy and dense to describe came bearing down along the stone, as though the entire weight of the Emerald Screen Range had been compressed into this one-zhang-two pillar.
He drew a deep breath and drove the Hundred Bones Resonance inside him to full power.
Where body cultivation was concerned, Gu Chengming could ask his own conscience honestly: of every technique he had ever known, none was purer than the Hundred Bones Resonance.
What was purity? Ordinary body-refining arts stressed a strong physique and abundant blood and qi. Their aim was to forge the body into a handy weapon.
The Hundred Bones Resonance was different. What it pursued was "Body Cultivation Great Emperor" — the so-called ultimate end of the Dao.
In daily cultivation, its polishing of the flesh could only be called obsessive.
Others thought a meridian's carrying capacity was fine once it was sufficient; it insisted that every last meridian be tempered to flawlessness, and half an inch short wouldn't do. Others thought that when bone density hit a bottleneck you could route around it; it hammered away at the same wall over and over, tireless, never cutting a corner even when the returns were minuscule.
It would even run itself while Gu Chengming was fast asleep, making fine adjustments to his blood and qi.
Once he had jolted awake in the middle of the night to find himself body-refining, and nearly concluded he'd been possessed by something evil. Only later did he learn it was the Hundred Emperor sneaking in extra training while he slept.
That sheer sincerity toward the great Dao of body cultivation — you couldn't find a second like it in the entire cultivation world.
On that basis, Gu Chengming rated his chances rather well.
If he didn't trust himself, he should at least trust the Hundred Emperor.
[The Hundred Bones Resonance, blood and qi roaring, emperor's aura at full amplification: Come then! Let This Emperor see just how much this relic of an ancient body cultivator is really worth!]
Blood and qi surged, pouring into both arms like an angry tide.
Gu Chengming clenched his back teeth, waist and stance as one, and hauled upward with everything he had.
At first the Yuanzhu didn't budge a hair... and then, the very next instant, the inscriptions on its shaft flared to life, dark-gold radiance flowing slowly along the grooves, and the whole pillar let out a low, deep hum.
The shaft began to tremble — faintly, so faintly that if Gu Chengming's palms hadn't been pressed flat against it he wouldn't have felt it at all.
Below the terrace, Hua Daiyi's eyes went round and he sucked in a sharp breath.
He had spent the better part of his life in the Hunyuan Sect and watched no fewer than twenty body cultivators challenge the Chengyuan Trial with his own eyes. Not one had drawn a reaction like this from the Yuanzhu.
Who was the last one to manage it? True Lord Bedrock, a thousand years ago — and that was a line in the archives!
Hua Daiyi stared fixedly at the terrace, forgetting even to put down the wine bowl in his hand.
And yet the phenomenon went no further than that.
The trembling lasted a few breaths, then gradually subsided, and the Yuanzhu returned to dead stillness.
Gu Chengming poured on more force. The Hundred Bones Resonance's blood-and-qi amplification was already pushed to its peak, yet the Yuanzhu might as well have grown roots into the terrace. Shudder it did; rise even a fraction it would not.
He let go slowly and stepped back half a pace, lowering his eyes to his own palms, his brow knotted with incomprehension.
Even the Hundred Emperor wasn't enough?
The Hundred Bones Resonance's purity as a body-cultivation art was the summit of everything he knew. If even it couldn't align with the Dao-intent held inside the Yuanzhu, could anyone in this world truly walk the body cultivator's road to the end?
[The Hundred Bones Resonance muttered, unwilling to accept it: This makes no sense...]
There had been resonance — no question, or the Yuanzhu wouldn't have trembled at all.
But resonance alone clearly wasn't enough. Something crucial was still missing.
Just as Gu Chengming was ready to give it up and turn to shake his head at Hua Daiyi below, something stirred inside him.
—It was the Free and Unfettered Art!
His heart jumped.
A thread of aura rose leisurely from the depths of his dantian: the aura of the ancient body cultivator within the Yuanzhu's inscriptions, simulated by the Free and Unfettered Art.
Gu Chengming hesitated a moment, then set his hands to the Yuanzhu again. This time, before he had exerted any force at all, the pillar came away from the terrace clean and easy — outrageously, insultingly easy.
Gu Chengming froze. So did the Hundred Bones Resonance.
[Hundred Bones Resonance: ?!]
A moment ago he'd thrown everything he had into it for a few faint shudders. Now, without any real effort in his arms, the pillar had simply lifted itself? This had nothing whatsoever to do with the "weight of a Dao" that body cultivators made so much of.
Gu Chengming held the Yuanzhu up in both hands, thinking.
So what the Yuanzhu recognized wasn't "attainment in the great Dao of body cultivation" at all — it was "that particular person's aura"?
This was, surely, a back door the founding patriarch had left for himself?
Think it through. An ancient power who had made a saint of his flesh, nearing the end of his lifespan, leaves behind a pillar infused with his own Dao-intent and sets down the rule that "whoever can bear the weight of the Dao may be Holy Son." It sounded lofty and high-minded, a spur to later generations.
But what if what it recognized wasn't will and Dao-intent at all, but the patriarch's own aura?
Then the point of it was obvious: so that when he reincarnated one day, or came back by seizing another's body, he could use this object to climb the ladder in a single step and take the highest seat with perfect legitimacy.
With that in mind, Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method's earlier line — "promoting solely on merit; the Huntian Sect's founding patriarch was a man of clear understanding" — came off as thoroughly ironic.
What a fine breaking of convention to bring down talent. Turned out the talent he was bringing down was himself.
Gu Chengming was mid-rant inside his own head when the Yuanzhu in his hands stopped waiting for him.
The inscriptions blazed up all at once. No longer that faint circulating dark gold — the entire pillar ignited in sequence, base to tip, dark gold flaring into crimson gold, crimson gold turning to a searing white incandescence.
A column of light shot into the sky.
The formation lines at the four corners of the Chengyuan Terrace activated in unison; a crimson-gold pillar of light tore up out of the ground and ran straight through the clouds. Ancient wards that had slept for thousands of years thundered into motion, and the earth-veins of the entire rear mountain resonated as one.
Then the heavens themselves changed.
The cloud layer above the Hunyuan Sect was ripped apart by an immense power, baring a glittering river of stars.
Out of that star-river, a vast purple aurora came rushing from the eastern horizon, unrolling across a thousand li, draping the whole of the Huntian Plain beneath a dreamlike curtain of light.
Purple qi coming out of the east, sweeping thirty thousand li.
At the same moment, dozens of ancient bells deep in the rear mountain were roused by the phenomenon and rang out together, deep and long and far-carrying.
The bells rolled on without a break, echoing among the peaks of the Emerald Screen Range. Ten thousand rays of rosy light followed hard behind, bursting outward in every direction from the Yuanzhu's crown, lighting up the night sky as bright as noon.
Gu Chengming stood squarely at the center of all that radiance, the Yuanzhu held high overhead, an expression on his face that could no longer be called awe so much as speechlessness.
He glanced up at the magnificent "purple qi from the east across thirty thousand li" special effect above him, then glanced down at the ten thousand rays of light churning in the formation lines under his feet, and found the whole thing absurd.
Just as he'd thought. This was the grand entrance the founding patriarch had carefully prepared for his own return.
From the effects package alone you could work out the old senior's aesthetic preferences while he lived: purple qi from the east, ten thousand rays of rosy light, bells tolling through the nine heavens.
Old senior, in ancient times this combination might well have counted as top-of-the-line.
But what year was it now? These days, when a fifth-realm great cultivator broke through, the standard package was "Dao bells ringing in chorus, heavenly flowers raining down, golden lotuses welling up from the ground." Purple qi from the east was, at best, the entry-level starter bundle.
This plain and unadorned, really?
And ten thousand rays of rosy light on top of it.
Gu Chengming remembered perfectly well that a few days back, buying spirit wine at the market, the spirit artifact shop next door had a discount item called the "Ten Thousand Rays of Rosy Light Firework Tube." Three spirit stones for two tubes, buy five get one free.
While he was grumbling to himself along these lines, the purple qi overhead showed no sign at all of dispersing. If anything it thickened, looking very much like it meant to swallow the entire Huntian Plain.
From the direction of the Hunyuan Sect's main peak in the distance, several sonic booms cracked out one after another.
The elders had been alerted. At a fifth-realm great cultivator's travel speed, they'd be on the scene within a hundred breaths at most.
He turned to look at Hua Daiyi below the terrace. The old man had gone completely to stone, the hand holding his wine bowl frozen in midair, motionless, most of the wine already spilled out without his noticing.
Gu Chengming was in the middle of working out what attitude to take toward the Hunyuan Sect elders about to descend on him, and how to nail down this Holy Son status, when—
The Free and Unfettered Art started running by itself again.
A vast suction erupted out of the depths of his dantian, tore down both arms and into his palms, and clamped onto the Yuanzhu like a set of jaws.
The ancient body-cultivator power stored within the Yuanzhu's inscriptions was being drained away by the Free and Unfettered Art at a rate visible to the naked eye, turned into a scalding torrent and forced into Gu Chengming's meridians.
Gu Chengming's face changed.
—Hold on, what do you think you're doing?!
The glow of the Yuanzhu's inscriptions dimmed at breakneck speed, crimson gold fading back to dark gold, dark gold going grey-white. Fine cracks crept quietly across the shaft, and the once-deep hum grew weaker and weaker.
And then, in the next instant, a line he had never seen before popped up on the system panel in front of him.
[CG evolving.]
Gu Chengming froze.
A CG? Right here, right now? You have to be joking.
At the exact moment the Hunyuan Sect's elders are tearing toward the rear mountain at top speed, you want to play me a CG?
The panel paid his complaints no attention whatsoever. The scene simply unfurled. At the same time, the other two techniques in his Sea of Consciousness began to run as well.
Three techniques activating at once—
The Free and Unfettered Art, the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula, and Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method.
Characters flickered across the system panel.
[Multiplayer CG unlocked.]
That notice, at least, shut Gu Chengming up entirely, and for a moment he forgot the situation he was standing in.
A multiplayer CG? That was a first.
Circumstances clearly didn't permit a leisurely study, but curiosity about this multiplayer CG stirred in him all the same.
—Damn it. The gal-game veteran is about to get hard-locked by a CG again.
Then the CG scene opened slowly.
Dead center in the frame stood a thick wooden stake, with a person bound to it. A girl, to be precise, small and slight of build.
Her hands were tied behind the stake, dry firewood and kindling heaped around her feet. A cold wind rolled past and the withered grass at the edge of the woodpile rustled.
The girl's head hung down, her face hidden in shadow. Gu Chengming had never seen her before, yet a thought sprang up in him by instinct.
This ought to be the Free and Unfettered Art, right?
He studied the scene carefully.
A girl bound to a stake, standing on firewood. This composition...
His first reaction was saint's martyrdom day, and his second was: where have you brought me? Is this even the cultivation world anymore?
Pyre, bondage, sacrifice — it carried a holy, tragic, epic weight. What was this tableau supposed to mean? What exactly had the Free and Unfettered Art glimpsed inside the Yuanzhu's power?
Gu Chengming was about to dig deeper when the CG's story pushed forward.
Below the stake, two figures appeared out of empty air.
On the left stood a girl in blue-green robes, upright and proper in bearing, bamboo slips at her waist, her brow radiating a Righteous Noble Breath that commanded respect without anger.
On the right stood a woman with an indolent air about her, her collar hanging half-open, swinging a half-pot of leftover wine in one hand, her stance so careless she might have been a vagrant who'd wandered by to watch the fun.
Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method. The Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula.
The two of them stood beside the woodpile, watching the girl on the stake with calm eyes.
And at their feet — Gu Chengming's gaze shifted slightly. A pile of odds and ends lay scattered on the ground. He hadn't made it out at first, but as the view drew closer, he finally recognized what it was.
Hats. A great heap of hats.
And the hats were covered in crooked, sprawling writing. Some said "traitor." Some said "spy." Some said "rebel and usurper." One especially eye-catching tall hat had three large characters brushed across it in vermilion, in wild flying strokes—
"Ambitious schemer."
Gu Chengming stared hard at that pile of hats, and a very bad feeling took shape in him.
Wait a moment.
He took in the whole picture again. A girl tied to a stake. A fire being laid at her feet.
Two people standing below to watch. And a great heap of tall hats inscribed with charges laid out to one side.
What kind of saintly martyrdom was this?!
In the image, Zhouli's Heaven-Human Heart-Rectifying Method bent down, picked up a hat, examined it a moment, and offered it up toward the girl on the stake with a solemn expression.
She spoke, in that same upright, rites-observing tone as always:
"This charge is grounded in evidence. Punishment is warranted."
Beside her, the Immortal-Concealing Wine-Sword Formula tipped her head back for a swig of strong liquor, clicked her tongue, and casually picked up a hat of her own to toss upward.
"I second this one. She really ought to be criticized for it."
One handed a hat up, the other threw one on — the two of them working in a harmony so seamless they might have rehearsed it a thousand times in private.
Gu Chengming finally understood what this scene was.
Hold on — how the hell is this a wholesale hat-pinning convention?!
...
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